“Joker: Folie à Deux” is a Self-Destructive Revision of Its Predecessor

That's (not) entertainment!

Until recently, I operated under the belief that no film is a waste of time. The mileage of a movie’s influence certainly varies, but at the very least, any viewing experience will enhance your understanding of the nuances of your taste. Joker: Folie à Deux fundamentally challenged this philosophy — a pathetic exercise in retribution, articulated by director Todd Phillips as a stitled apology for accidentally being taken way too seriously in a medium for which he has no talent.

Joker (2019) was never a film poised for a sequel. While Phillips presented a semi-competent exploration of an isolated man’s growing resentment, the film never deeply interrogated any material realities beyond scolding. Despite its frictionless political stakes, Joker was adeptly acted and constructed, succeeding mostly because it was costumed in the ideas and aesthetics of much better films (namely Scorsese’s The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, which both derive part of their power by making socially and politically textured judgements). 

The real defining characteristic of Joker was its animated cultural reaction and the intense fear with which the film was received. Before its release, it was promoted as a dangerous rallying cry that would radicalize a generation of isolated young men, when in reality it was merely a fairly timid and directionless film that condemns insurrection just as much as it condemns material conditions that motivate it.

There’s probably no way to fold an arthouse-epigone-turned-national-security-threat-fluke back into a successful franchise, but when you’re handed a blank check for a sequel, you might as well try. But Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t interested in reiterating any of the qualities that lent its predecessor success. Instead, the film launches itself into a two-hour humiliation ritual — an agonizing and contemptuous procession, knowingly unjustified in its existence but determined to take us all down with it. 

In Joker: Folie à Deux, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) isn’t a vigilante symbol or a heroic martyr whose incarceration galvanizes the masses. He’s a pathetic outcast, humiliated and haunted by his accidental fame, easily manipulated by anyone who affirms his fantasy of martyrdom, like Lee (Lady Gaga). Now, he’s on trial for the events of the first film, articulating his defense around the conceit of his dual identity as both Joker and Arthur. 

Phillips treats his main character with utter contempt and a complete lack of sympathy, reinventing his symbolic power to be completely inseparable from humiliated delusion. Joker: Folie à Deux clearly has no patience for idolatry of its eponymous character, using the testimony from the witness stand as a means of regurgitating the events of his origin story. But these objective accounts are antipathetic and revisionist — his story told through another’s eyes is pitiful, cruel, uninspiring and mundane. 

As Joker: Folie à Deux works overtime to eradicate any of the glamor of its predecessor, it simultaneously ensures that its own plot is fractured beyond the point of reclamation. The complete lack of commitment to any tonal or narrative consistency renders it punishment by proxy for the audience, not a condemnation of Arthur but rather a punitive measure towards anyone who ever bothered to take him seriously. 

As the bait-and-switch courtroom gimmick as a collective punishment falls on its face, Joker: Folie à Deux doesn’t even care to attempt to construct an interesting procedural. Any time the trial conceit becomes overly demanding, Arthur launches into a guerilla musical number, a mocking affront towards anyone who bothers to invest themselves into his story. He’s not even a comedian anymore, just a lifeless vaudevillian so deeply entrenched in his own power trip that the spectacle becomes tedious. 

As the audience sinks lower and lower in their seats, and the film continues its procession of monotony, Arthur’s first iteration in Joker grows more and more distant, replaced instead by an insufferable and pathetic nuisance. He doesn’t go out with a bang, or even fade away — he simply crafts his own irrelevance through self-sabotage. Phillips utterly decimates the character, turning cult-like followers into faceless ghosts who float by his windows, shattering all of his symbolic power until even his perverse maxim — “that’s entertainment!” — can never ring true. It’s just a waste of time, and that’s all, folks. 

OVERALL SCORE: 3/10

Joker: Folie à Deux was released on October 4, 2024 and is currently showing in US theaters.